Combat Machines

KILLER OFFENSIVE

One by one, European leaders are dying by assassination. And each of the victims opposed Russia’s attempts to gain increasing power. Determined to stop this wave of terror before it hits American shores, Mack Bolan uses the killers’ next attack to flush them out. But these assassins are inhumanly fast, impervious to pain and programmed with cutting-edge combat skills by a hard-line Soviet scientist.

Now Bolan is being shadowed by a ruthless Russian intelligence team racing to bury him along with this rogue military project. To save a summit of world leaders, the Executioner must play two brutal factions against each other...and send the assassins’ creator to meet his maker.

“I think it fitting that you die here.”

The assassin hadn’t moved far, and Bolan seized the opportunity. Raising his smartphone, he triggered its camera, setting off the flash. The bright light blinded his adversary, and he staggered backward.

Bolan charged forward, intending to tackle him and take him down, but the man spun aside as he brought his fist down on the back of Bolan’s head, driving him to the ground, stunned.

The assassin bent and flipped Bolan over onto the tracks, staring into his face. “You will never find us. You will never stop us.” Then he took off again, racing toward an oncoming train.

Bolan tried to push himself up, tried to crawl to the narrow space next to the tracks, but his body refused to obey his commands. The train’s headlight was blinding, the thunder of its approach drowning out everything.

The Executioner’s last thought before blackness took him was that this was not how he’d expected to die...

Combat Machines

Don Pendleton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.

—Robert E. Lee

Human beings often need an ideology to give their lives meaning and purpose. But unquestioning obedience to any doctrine is just as dangerous as having none at all. It can lead to terrible crimes committed in the name of these beliefs. And when that happens, that sort of ideology must be stopped—by whatever means necessary.

—Mack Bolan

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Legend

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Mostar, Herzegovina

July 6, 1992

The distant, steady whistle and crumpf of artillery shells landing in the city scarcely bothered Andreja Tomić anymore. When the siege had first begun three months ago, she’d spent many exhausted, sleepless nights waiting for the next shell to land on the building she was living in. Now, however, the barrage’s constant din and its incipient danger had been relegated to the back of her mind, acknowledged, but not dwelled on. Not when she had so much work to do. Now, she was mostly just exhausted.

Mostar had been the scene of a pitched battle for control of the city and the surrounding area since that spring. The Yugoslav People’s Army, or JNA, had invaded in early April and seized control of a large portion of the city. A sustained counteroffensive by the Croatian Defense Council, or HVO, had pushed the JNA forces out of the town, but they had retaliated with their ongoing artillery barrage, which the HVO was replying to in kind.

At first, Andreja had feared for those under her care, but the JNA had seemed to be directing their fire on more valuable targets, at least in their minds. She had her doubts about that. In the past few weeks, the seemingly endless rain of munitions had claimed a Franciscan monastery, the Catholic cathedral and bishop’s palace. The destruction wasn’t all carried out by the JNA. After retaking the city, the HVO had demolished the Serbian Orthodox Monastery, as well as the Orthodox Cathedral Church that dated back to the mid-nineteenth century.